Maybe it was paranoia. It could have been the memories of what had happened in the States, of that campaign of terror and torment which had hunted her off social media and off the show.Her therapist would tell her it was. Alex wasn’t sure. Not now she was back here.
But there were other traumas too, weren’t there? Losing her dad. Mum dying. Theo…to name but a few. And two of them revolved around Wildewood Hall.
Coming back here was a terrible mistake. She should have known better.
One morning she turned on the shower and nothing came out of it. She stood there in her robe, listening to the pipes begin to whine and groan. The noise shook through the walls and, as Alex stared in horror, a thick red-brown sludge emerged from the shower head like meat out of a mincer.
Swearing loudly, she tried to reach in to turn it off, only to feel the icy touch of the stuff slither over her bare arm. She wasn’t proud of the shriek that ripped itself out from somewhere deep inside her and she whirled around, grabbing the nearest towel to wipe it off, which only succeeded in smearing it into her skin.
She stumbled back, still scrubbing at her arm, and collided with someone.
Nick stood in the doorway of her bathroom, his hair and beard still wet, his robe tied loosely around his body, like he’d only just got out of a shower of his own. One which had contained a lot more water and a lot less gore. His arms came up around her, although whether to stop her, hold her up, or ward her off she couldn’t say. He was strong, she already knew that, but his touch was unexpectedly gentle, secure around her, holding her close. The scent of soap mingled with the scent of him – woodsy, musky, male. Her breath caught in her throat.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ The rumble of his voice went through her body as well, deep and reverberating, making her shiver with sudden need.
‘Shower,’ she said, unable to form words. ‘Sludge. I got it on me. I think I’m going to throw up.’
He released her and Alex closed her eyes in mortification. What was she thinking? Why did she have to turn into an absolute idiot around him? Especially when he stood there, hot and half naked. Nick hurried past her, and somehow managed to turn the shower off without getting anything on him. Of course. Longer arms or something. Or just luck. She didn’t know.
‘That…that shouldn’t have happened,’ he said, bending over the disgusting mess on the bottom of the tray, glaring like it had personally offended him. ‘I’ll get it fixed, I promise.’ Then he glanced over at her through the fall of dark, wet hair. ‘Do you – do you want to use mine? To clean up?’
‘Oh God, yes.’ He didn’t have to ask twice.
Nick’s room was smaller and far more simply furnished than Alex’s. The bedclothes were still rumpled and she could see the indentations in the pillows where he’d slept. Everything else was perfectly neat and surprisingly impersonal. He left her there, grabbing some clothes to change into and grumbling about old plumbing.
She tried to ignore that he’d told her Theo had only recently had the ensuite put in the master suite, brand new and state-of-the-art. This was not a case of old plumbing. But something could have got into the pipes, she supposed. Now she was away from it, standing in the darkened room which carried the scent of Nick everywhere, logic was able to make a reappearance.
God, what Gabe and the others would have made out of that scene, she thought.
There was a double-frame with photos on the bedside table and a small stack of books. They were the only things that might tell her anything about Nick Walker. That man in the pub hadimplied something sinister. His wife had died. And the reports – ‘known to the gardaí’ was not a good phrase to have hanging over an employee.
In the photo, Nick was younger, clean-shaven and smiling. He gazed in obvious adoration at the woman in his arms, blue-eyed and beautiful. She gazed past the camera at whoever was taking the photo, a secretive smile on her perfect face. The other photo was of a little girl with the same dark hair and blue eyes, the same woman much younger. She was holding flowers and dried grass knotted into a circle, like the one in the kitchen, and smiled so proudly at her creation. Alex stared at the two photos, wondering how on earth she could ask him about them when he’d never mentioned his wife at all. And whether he would tell her anything. Grief did funny things to people.
Like made them hide away from the world in a creepy old house and drive everyone else away perhaps.
Creeping around Nick’s personal belongings was not a good idea, she decided. If she could find a subtle way to ask about his wife, she’d do so, but otherwise she was best to leave it alone. Or at least until she heard from Arnold. She showered as quickly as she could, using the shampoo and soap there, aware of the scent that she already associated with him wrapping itself around her now – cedarwood, with a touch of citrus, and something spiced, like cloves or cinnamon – rich, earthy, woodsy. Nick Walker to a tee.
The email from Arnold came at almost the same time as a message from Gabe which simply readAre you shitting me?So, he knew as well. Damn, she should have told Arnold to keep it on the downlow. But the group shared everything. They always had. The lack of personal space was one of the more irritating things about working with them.
Not a lot of info on Nick Walker that I can find but I’ll keep digging. No birth cert, which is weird, but it could just be a name or location thing. I’ve reached out to a friend in law enforcement to see what she can find out.
That was probably illegal but Alex decided to let it slide. It wasn’t like she was going to make anything public.
His wife was Sally Neary, a local, and cause of death was deemed to have been an accident. She fell down the stairs in Wildewood Hall, two years ago, and they brought him in for questioning. Your brother too as he was in the house at the time.
They questioned Theo too? She hadn’t heard anything about that. Not that she’d been in regular contact with her brother. Well, he had been living here at the time and owned the place, she supposed. The image of Sally’s face reared up in her mind, her smile in particular, and Alex felt a chill breeze pass over the back of her neck. The door to the study was closed. So was the window looking out over the front of the house. God, she hated the draughts in this place. She shook her head, dismissing her overactive imagination.
Nick’s wife would have been exactly Theo’s type, once upon a time.
The house has rather a fascinating history,Arnold went on, because of course he’d started digging into the history of the house as well. Alex sighed.
I’ll write the whole thing up for you and see what else I can dig up, but the highlights – The house itself was built on an earlier Norman site, some time in the late 1400s, and expanded, especially in the late 1700s which gives the Georgian façadeyou see today. Nasty time for the whole country from then on really. Rebellion in 1798, led to severe restrictions and the de Wildes didn’t exactly help. A lot of taxes, a lot of repression. It just got worse and worse, the excesses. They pretty much partied while the countryside around them starved.
They weren’t alone among the landlords of the time, she thought. Still, it left a bitter taste in her mouth as she looked around the room in which she now sat. How many of her ancestors had sat right here and not given a shit about what was happening right outside their door? The worst was 1845–1852, often called the Potato Famine, but the Irish name for it translated as the Great Hunger, and it had sod all to do with potatoes and more to do with genocide. It wiped out a third of the population, and led another third to flee the country.
The fifteenth baron employed a steward called Blaise Chambers, known as the Master of the Revels. He treated the house like some kind of private fiefdom. He ran the estate almost into the ground. Bankrupted the family. They almost lost everything. Neither the first time nor the last but the most spectacular. They say he used to host orgies of every excess in the house and no one was safe there. He died in 1826, shot through the heart. A lot of stories about the house say he haunts it still so watch out for him. We really ought to check it out.
That sounded like Gabe had been leaning over his shoulder. She closed the laptop with a sigh.
